Sunday, August 12, 2007

Megahed's Dad Explains the Pipe-Bomb Traffic Stop

 
The case of the USF students accused of transporting pipe-bombs (and a mysterious liquid) continues to grow curiouser and curiouser.

Federal agents executed a search warrant at a house in Tampa in connection with the students' arrest.

The home -- 12402 Pampas Place -- has been linked to a couple of the FBI's most wanted terrorists: Ramadan Shallah and Tarik Hamdi.

The father of one of the suspects, Samir Megahed, met with his son in the Berkeley County, SC detention center. After the meeting, the elder Megahed told reporters, "we now believe more than before in the innocence of Youssef in this matter, and feel this incident is all a big misunderstanding."

He said his son often kept the following items in his trunk, which may have led to the confusion:

1) A gas canister, for refueling
2) Charcoal, a small barbecue grill, and lighter fluid, for cookouts. He "liked to grill chicken and beef with friends."
3) Tools and chemicals to clean the tools for working on an old Lexus.
4) Scuba gear, because Youssef "enjoyed scuba diving."


The contents of a typical car trunk. At least, for friends of Ramadan Shallah.

That's an eminently plausible explanation. I mean, how could anyone question a couple of kids storing oxygen tanks, gas canisters, lighter fluid, charcoal, igniters, fuses, potassium nitrate, sugar, and other chemicals in an automobile trunk -- oh, along with some pointy tools, a "mystery" liquid, and PVC pipes that prosecutors termed pipe bombs? I mean, that all sounds perfectly harmless to me.

More: Atlas and Dan Riehl have been on this case from the get-go.

Update: Stratfor seems quite cynical about the suspect items.

Potassium nitrate (or saltpeter) is the oxidizer used in the manufacture of black powder. When potassium nitrate is mixed with sugar and confined -- as in a PVC or metal pipe, thermos bottle or tin can, for instance -- it will function as a low explosive. Indeed, improvised explosive devices (IEDs) manufactured from potassium nitrate are common in many parts of the world. Hobby fuses and rocket igniters could be used to activate such a device...

Another potentially incriminating item in this case is the gasoline can found in the trunk of the car. Gasoline, which has no application in model rocketry, can be combined with the other materials seized to create an explosive-actuated incendiary device -- which can be more destructive than a pipe bomb alone.

The Adventures of Shrillary

 
I hadn't realized that Hillary had commissioned her own comic book. But this issue is timely: the Peter Paul civil case against the Clinton family appears to be heating up.

Terrorism/Moonbat Convergence: Exhibit 18,720

 
Urban Infidel reports on a series of highly offensive posters showing up in Amsterdam and Manhattan (and probably elsewhere).

Yes, that's Anne Frank in a kaffiyeh, the symbol of Palestinian solidarity and the intifidah. Somehow, I don't think Ms. Frank -- had she survived the Nazi death camps -- would have embraced a crew with the blood of scores of teenage girls (and many other innocents) on their hands. But, for some pathetic moonbats, this bizarre imagery just makes sense.

Line o' the Day: Museum of Horrible Explanations

 
"If anyone ever starts a museum of horrible explanations, the one-liner by Newsweek's Evan Thomas about his magazine's dubious reporting on the Duke non-rape case — 'The narrative was right but the facts were wrong' — is destined to become a popular exhibit, right up there with 'we had to destroy the village to save it.'" --John Leo, New York Sun

"How could you have let this happen?"

 
Here in this country we have whatever percentage the population who has forgotten about 9/11. We have the Democrat Party aligned with the Drive-By Media doing everything they can to convince people in this country there is no external threat to the United States because they're going to get rid of Bush some day. When we get rid of Bush, the world will love us again, including the Islamofascists.


But I talked to Norman Podhoretz, [who] is convinced that Iran is something that's going to have to be dealt with sooner rather than later. If we wait until they're nuclear tipped then what do you do? Then the whole recipe for dealing with it changes. He said to me in our interview, "Baby Boomers grew up and they started learning about what happened in World War II and the rise of Hitler and the Neville Chamberlain incident and so forth. They started learning more about it in school. There were frequent movies made, World War II movies. In fact, to this day, movies are still made about the Holocaust. Fifty years after it was over, 40 years after World War II there were young people looking back and saying to people in Europe, "How could you let this happen? How could you have let this happen?"

Norman Podhoretz said to me that his great fear is that in another 20 or 30 or 50 years from now, if Iran is allowed the nuclear [club], people will be looking back and saying, "How could you have let it happen?"

EIB: President Bush will deal with Iran

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Weird signs add up to: Not Good

 
From what I've seen, Debkafile has had a somewhat spotty track record for accuracy. So I ignored its article and some related blog postings pointing to a new threat of dirty bombs in several U.S. cities:

...The al Qaeda communications [on Jihadist websites] accuse the Americans of the grave error of failing to take seriously the videotape released by the American al Qaeda spokesman Adam Gaddahn last week. "They will soon realize their mistake when American cities are hit by quality operations," said one message... Another said the attacks would be carried out “by means of trucks loaded with radio-active material against America’s biggest city and financial nerve center.”

A third message mentioned New York, Los Angeles and Miami as targets. It drew the answer: "The attack, with Allah’s help, will cause an economic meltdown, many dead, and a financial crisis on a scale that compels the United States to pull its military forces out of many parts of the world, including Iraq, for lack of any other way of cutting down costs..."

Then I see a report on LGF (via Bill Roggio) that gave me pause. Word has it that Al Qaeda training camps in the area of Waziristan have suddenly been vacated:

The Fourth Rail interviewed a senior military intelligence official and a military officer... [who] wish to remain anonymous... Both sources are particularly concerned about the implications of the emptying of the camps.

...The emptying of the camps is a cause for great concern in the military and intelligence communities. "We don’t know where they went to or who was in the camps," the military officer told The Fourth Rail.. "They are well trained, these aren’t your entry level jihadis. They are dangerous... This is one of the reasons that we are worried about a major CONUS [Continental United States] attack...” [he also noted] the recent influx of news of terror cells attempting to penetrate the US. "If they evacuated their bases, they almost certainly did so out of fear of more than just the Pakistani army."

Then Reuters (yes, slightly less reliable than Debka) reports that New York police are battening down the hatches:

New York city police increased security throughout Manhattan on Friday and at bridges and tunnels in response to what they called an "unverified radiological threat." ...The New York Police Department said in a statement it had increased the deployment of radiological sensors on vehicles, boats and helicopters and had set up vehicle checkpoints in lower Manhattan and at bridges and tunnels... Police confirmed the increased security was in response to receiving information that a dirty bomb may go off around 34th street in Manhattan on Friday evening.

New York police played down the increased security... "It is stressed that these deployments are strictly precautionary and not the result of any verified threat," NYPD Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said in a statement...

Sales of John Edwards' bumpers stickers have slowed considerably in the Manhattan area.

Photo credit: New York Post

The Adventures of Barack Obama

 
I guess Obama really is going after the younger crowd!
 
Hat tips: Vanderleun, Superdickery, Cox & Forkum, and Larwyn

Friday, August 10, 2007

Y2K claims another victim: Al Gore

 
Oops!

DailyTech reveals a teensy, weensy problem with the climate change data that made the case for global warming.

Steve McIntyre, who operates the site climateaudit.org [was] inspecting historical temperature graphs [and] noticed a strange discontinuity, or "jump" in many locations, all occurring around the time of January, 2000.

These graphs were created by NASA's Reto Ruedy and James Hansen (who shot to fame when he accused the administration of trying to censor his views on climate change). Hansen refused to provide McKintyre with the algorithm used to generate graph data, so McKintyre reverse-engineered it. The result appeared to be a Y2K bug in the handling of the raw data... McKintyre notified the pair of the bug; Ruedy replied and acknowledged the problem as an "oversight" that would be fixed in the next data refresh.

NASA has now silently released corrected figures, and the changes are truly astounding. The warmest year on record is now 1934. 1998 (long trumpeted by the media as record-breaking) moves to second place. 1921 takes third. In fact, 5 of the 10 warmest years on record now all occur before World War II. Anthony Watts has put the new data in chart form, along with a more detailed summary of the events...

If you're waiting to see this reported in the New York Times, don't hold your breath. Unless you're being driven around on Martha's Vineyard by a Kennedy.

Al Gore has already apologized for the entire "global warming" fiasco. He was recently quoted as saying, "What? You haven't made a mistake? My bad! Is that apology sufficient? My bad!"

Ku Klux Hamas

 
Who knew? Hamas truly is a multi-dimensional organization: a posse of murderous, suicidal goons with deep-seated prejudices and, now, a 'Navy' to boot. Gateway Pundit has the details.

Thursday, August 09, 2007

Megahed's Family stands behind RocketBoy

 
This evening, WCBD in Charleston interviewed the family of Yousef Megahed. Megahed and Ahmed Mohamed were arrested near the Goose Creek Naval Weapons facility after the discovery of pipe-bombs and other suspicious materials in their vehicle. FBI officials are refusing to comment on the case, though Megahed is being held on $300,000 bond while Mohamed is held on $500,000 bond. Megahed's family is standing behind the youth.

Sister: ...these past few days have been very difficult for us... we have voluntarily opened our home to the FBI... we have cooperated to the fullest extent...

Sister: ...our family wants to tell Yousef that we love him and miss him...

Reporter: ...They [the family] chose not to comment on the arrest or what was in [the] car... but they say they believe it's all a misunderstanding... They describe Yousef as an earnest, loving man...

Reporter: ...a family standing united, though 400 miles away, Yousef stands accused...

The family could be right. Maybe the South Florida students were on a weekend frolic that involved shooting off extremely sophisticated PVC rockets for fun... and they coincidentally packed a gasoline can with the rockets just in case they got lost... but then they actually did get lost and then they ended up near a large military installation... so they sped up really, really fast to get away from the military base... and then, when a policeman stopped them for speeding, they hurriedly closed and hid their laptop because they were afraid the cop might see some of their private Webkinz messages.

I'm pretty sure that's the way it went down.

"DREAM" of open borders for smugglers and terrorists

 
ABC News features an ominous series of government photos from DHS and ICE. They illustrate forged visas and tunnel complexes that span the US borders with Canada and Mexico.

A DHS security assessment relates that "tunnels under U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico serve primarily as conduits for transporting illegal drugs in the United States... [and] are [also] used for alien smuggling, including special interest aliens." The term "special interest" designates persons suspected of ties to Jihadist terror groups.

In addition, the DHS says that tunnels along the U.S.-Mexico border will remain a threat to U.S. security. According to the DHS, "The densely populated residential areas and growing commercial development directly along the border in cities such as Calexico, Nogales, Otay Mesa, and Tijuana will provide [human and drug] smugglers increased opportunities to construct tunnels and exploit the short distances between structures straddling the border."


But not to worry, Hillary Clinton co-sponsors legislation like the DREAM Act. If you believe that drug and human smugglers need a reward for sneaking into the country and then evading the police for five years, then have I got a deal for you. How does amnesty and in-state tuition sound? Numbers USA has all of the outrageous details on Hillary's various open border efforts.

Hat tips: Atlas and Larwyn

Best. Techie. Ad. Ever.

 
Saw this IT hiring ad on a tech news site.



Wednesday, August 08, 2007

Your friendly, neighborhood IED-makers?

 
Our friendly neighborhood pipe-bomb/fireworks experts are still in jail in South Carolina. The two suspects -- 26-year-old Ahmed Abda Sherf Mohamed and 21-year-old Youssef Samir Megahed -- are both students at the University of South Florida in Tampa.


Stratfor offers some interesting details that haven't been widely covered in the press:

* The suspects claim they were hauling fireworks, but the prosecutor says the devices were "pipe-bombs"
* A deputy was "approaching the suspects' stopped vehicle when he saw one of the men close a laptop computer and attempt to hide it..."
* The trunk contained potassium nitrate, sugar, gasoline, PVC pipe, "hobby rocket" igniters, fuses, and an unnamed "suspicious substance"
* Potassium nitrate (saltpeter) is an oxidizer used to manufacture black powder. Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) can be manufactured from potassium nitrate and are reportedly common in many countries. The fuses and igniters could easily be employed to detonate this class of device.
* Gasoline "has no application in model rocketry"
* The PVC device that was disrupted appears at this point to fit the legal definition of a pipe bomb, which is considered a "destructive device" under federal firearms law. As a result, the two men will likely face federal charges such as possession of an unregistered destructive device and interstate transportation of an unregistered destructive device.

The pair were just seven miles away from a major Naval installation where, reportedly, nuclear weapons are stored.

But maybe the USF students were just on a holiday jaunt that involved shooting off very sophisticated hobby rockets for fun... and they packed a gasoline can with the rockets just in case they got lost... but then they actually did get lost and then they ended up near a large military installation... so they sped up really fast to get away from the military base... and then, when a policeman stopped them for speeding, they hurriedly closed and hid their laptop because they were afraid the cop might see some of their most private Facebook messages.

That's got to be how it went down.

Times de-selects itself, crowd-sources ideas for terrorists

 
The New York Times is soliciting the best ideas for terrorists to wreak havoc in the United States. Seriously. But never -- never -- question their patriotism. After all, the Times might be cooperating with the government by feeding the guvvies all of the IP addresses that are hitting that article. Er - on second thought, maybe not.

In related news, Maureen Dowd's readership just increased, like, infinity-percent, dude.

The upside of viruses for Microsoft and...

 
For years, commentators have pilloried Microsoft for its historically insecure coding practices.

But could there be a covert business strategy associated with the endless stream of bugs?

Viruses continue to plague computer users. 38 percent of US households reported a virus infection in the last two years, and 20 percent of all users had significant computer trouble because of it... Consumer Reports believes that, over the past two years, malware infestations have resulted in 1.8 million households replacing their PCs in order to free themselves of viruses and the like...

That's right: nearly a million households a year replace their entire PC in order to cleanse it from the scourge of malware.

Thus, could someone argue that Microsoft surreptitiously encourages insecure coding practices in order to ensure a steady stream of upsells within households? Seems implausible to me:

Consumer Reports suggests some sensible precautions: use a firewall and security software, take care when using public computers, and... consider Mac. "Because Macs are less prevalent than Windows-based machines," we're told, "online criminals get less of a return on their investment when targeting them..."

My next conspiracy theory: is Apple secretly staffing developer-saboteurs within Microsoft to ensure a steady series of security bugs?

Ars Technica: The state of the net - not so strong

I dare you

 
No, I double-dare you to listen to this tape for four hours straight. Then consider... four years.


Is it a health risk to fill my ear canals with peanut butter?

Tuesday, August 07, 2007

First Annual Celebrity Hostage Draft!

 
Mia Farrow recently offered to exchange her freedom for that of an imprisoned humanitarian worker in Darfur. Farrow made the offer in a letter written to the Sudanese president (hat tip: EIB).

The idea has swept the globe! Terrorists worldwide will draft celebrities this evening, who will offer themselves up in exchange for kidnapped civilians.

And, so, we welcome you to the First Annual Celebrity Hostage Draft. Skip, we're ready to roll... very excited... here's the first selection...

1 - With the first pick in the terrorist draft, the Al Qaeda Fighting Butt-scabs select... Sean Penn!

2 - With the second pick in the terrorist draft, the Hezbollah Stanky Hookahs choose... Barbra Streisand!

3 - With the third pick in the terrorist draft, the Hamas Suicidal Loons pick... Alec Baldwin!

4 - With the fourth pick in the terrorist draft, the Al Qaeda-in-Iraq Crusty Feces select... Michael Moore!

5 - With the fifth pick in the terrorist draft, the Ansar al-Islam Slithering Scumbags choose... Martin Sheen!

6 - With the sixth pick in the terrorist draft, the Islamic Jihad Crazy Crackheads pick... Susan Sarandon!

7 - With the seventh pick in the terrorist draft, the Abu Sayyaf Exploding Turtles choose... Charlie Sheen!

8 - With the eighth pick in the terrorist draft, the Jemaah Islamiyah Exploding Penguins select... Tim Robbins!

9 - With the ninth pick in the terrorist draft, the Fatah Exploding Baby Seals choose... Harry Belafonte!

10 - With the tenth pick in the terrorist draft, the Darul Islam Exploding Puppies pick... Susan Sarandon!

You can not choose Susan Sarandon, we already choose Susan Sarandon!

No you didn't, you son of a liar! We pick Susan Sarandon first!

I KILL YOU!

Uh oh.

KA-BOOOMMMM!

Errrr... thanks for watching the first -- and, apparently, the last -- Celebrity Hostage Draft!

KGB: "The left is abetting America's enemies"

 
Well, that's going to leave a mark.

Take it from this old KGB hand: The left is abetting America's enemies with its intemperate attacks on President Bush...

Sowing the seeds of anti-Americanism by discrediting the American president was one of the main tasks of the Soviet-bloc intelligence community during the years I worked at its top levels. This same strategy is at work today, but it is regarded as bad manners to point out the Soviet parallels...

[A] goal of our anti-American offensive was to discourage the U.S. from protecting the world against communist terrorism and expansion. Sadly, we succeeded. After U.S. forces precipitously pulled out of Vietnam, the victorious communists massacred some two million people in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Another million tried to escape, but many died in the attempt. This tragedy also created a credibility gap between America and the rest of the world, damaged the cohesion of American foreign policy, and poisoned domestic debate in the U.S.

Unfortunately, partisans today have taken a page from the old Soviet playbook. At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, for example, Bush critics continued our mud-slinging at America's commander in chief. One speaker, Martin O'Malley, now governor of Maryland, had earlier in the summer stated he was more worried about the actions of the Bush administration than about al Qaeda. On another occasion, retired four-star general Wesley Clark gave Michael Moore a platform to denounce the American commander in chief as a "deserter." And visitors to the national chairman of the Democratic Party had to step across a doormat depicting the American president surrounded by the words, "Give Bush the Boot..."

Wall Street Journal: Propaganda Redux

Internet Banking Error

 
I think I better change banks.

Line 'o the Day: Difference between a Leftist and a Liberal

 
Democrats are fond of arguing that we should withdraw from Iraq so we can fight more effectively on the "real" battlefields in the war on terror in Afghanistan and perhaps Pakistan. But at the Contentions blog, Max Boot maintains that defeat in Iraq will make it more difficult to fight in Afghanistan and to counter terrorists in Pakistan. Boot points to a report in the Washington Post that Pakistan's dictator Musharraf has complained that his leverage over tribal militants has slipped because their leaders are less fearful of the U.S. given our difficulties in Iraq. Boot suggets that U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would accentuate this trend.

The point is a rather obvious one -- failure to succeed at war reduces a nation's ability to exert influence and emboldens a nation's enemies and potential enemies. This may not be a rationale for continuing to fight a lost cause. However, recent developments in Iraq strongly suggest that the cause there is not lost.

If the Democrats push for defeat in Iraq under these circumstances, it would be difficult not to conclude that either (a) they would like to see the U.S. unable to exert influence in the world or (b) they have no understanding of how the world works. Option (a) provides a good working definition of an American leftist; option (b) of an American liberal.

                                                      --Paul Mirengoff, writing at Powerline